This week’s blog post may not be as interesting as usual because I was unable to make this week’s class session due to the movement of class days; however I am going to try my best to make my blog post as interesting and informative as possible. After reading the required readings that were due for this week’s class I have found that this information is on the earthquake that happened in Japan. This ended up being a ground breaking natural disaster because for the first time ever social media was implemented for humanitarian use in a developed society. Because of this natural disaster, social networking usage spiked in Japan as they began to be used for disaster relief along with playful activities. Beat Communication Co., Ltd. is the largest provider of social networking packages in Japan and made all of this possible. Thanks to social networking many lives have been saved in the last decade due to natural disasters.
I found an amazing statistic in the reading that said after the earthquake social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter went up 60-70% in total. Another type of new social networking that was used was called mixi. As quoted from one of the assigned readings, “Japan used mixi to confirm the safety of employees, friends and family, to learn more about the disaster situation (such as the damage done to modes of transportation and electrical grids) and to listen to public service announcements and press reports in lieu of television”. As you can tell from the quote above after every new natural disaster, humans are coming up with new innovative ways to make good use of new types of technologies such as social media in order to benefit those around them in perilous times.
As a result of the earthquake in Japan, many corporations have begun implementing their own social networking sites or simply using Twitter as a communication system in the case that there is a natural disaster. I feel this is essential because social networking sites have proved time and time again to be excellent when used in disaster relief. The better prepared people are all over the world for these disasters, the less lives will be lost when these disasters really strike. As I also read from the assigned article, statistics also show that people using Twitter in Japan received quicker and better organized information than others. I truly believe that social networking is the way of the future whether you are using it for work or play it is everywhere in today’s society.
After reading these articles on Angel I thought that it would be beneficial to find a video about the earthquake in Japan and see first hand what it was like and also watch a video on how social networking affected humanitarian efforts. This video I found was titled “Japan Earthquake 2011- Twitter Messages” and can be found at the following link:
This video gave a very good description of what happened in Japan that sad day and linked it with a social network aspect. Note, the music in the video was terrible and made me want to rip my ears off, however the pictures were solid.
I think it is astonishing how quickly and how much social networking traffic rate went up during and after the crisis. The fact that companies and others are trying to make their own social networks in order to keep in touch and try and help their own is very impressive but there is a drawback to our reliance on technology.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens if the system goes down? As we saw with Haiti and Japan luckily the system did not go down. In Haiti it was severely damaged but up again within weeks. This is important the more connected we decide to become the more lost we will be when the connection is severed. We would be completely in the dark again, right back to the early 1900's if we lost our towers in one of the disasters with only papers to help us. I know their are mobile networks but they are not large enough in scale right now to help out an entire country if need be.
I really like the fact that companies and people are using social networks in innovative and creative ways to try and keep in touch with loved ones and help each other. I just hope that we do not become so dependent that if something bad enough happens and everything goes dark we are so lost that we can't remember how to light a candle.
Overall very good post and a very interesting perspective.
I think its very important to look at your second paragraph more in depth. Every disaster that has happened in the past decade as brought about hundreds of new technologies that have both been used in the past and were created on the spot for certain tasks needed that are then used in everyday life. I dont believe there will ever be a way for a country to totally stop a disaster from happening at extreme levels but there are ways to mitigate that disaster and lesson loses and i believe Japan is at the forefront of these plans. Social Technologies may help in these plans as well, many of the technologies created come strait from ideas used by companies such as Twitter and Facebook.
ReplyDeleteERIK MATTHEW LEITZEL
First, I would like to say I am not glad about missing class last week because I feel we lost valuable time to learn what exactly we had to do for the Requirements Analysis. Just like me you found that the statistics about how many social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter were used during the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami. I found that Twitter was not something that should be used by responders because the hashtags being used were used by everyone not just the people who are in need of help. I think that the Short Code 4636 something like that is the way of the future because it is more focused on people who need help after disaster or even for some illness issues.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed watching the video you posted in this week’s blog post. The video showed the anguish that many survivors faced after the terrible events of the earthquake and tsunami. These events will live forever in these people.
I believe that the short code 4636 or something like that is more effective when responding to a disaster or crisis. Ushahidi was very effective in what they did and the United Nations even started to take on what Ushahidi started.
Jesse, Guido-Freak, Injured Spartan, Spaghetti Craver, Gonzo Nose, etc... When you state: "As you can tell from the quote above after every new natural disaster, humans are coming up with new innovative ways to make good use of new types of technologies such as social media in order to benefit those around them in perilous times," I could not agree with you more! Social media sites are increasingly becoming the standard means of communication between generations, nations, people, and ideas worldwide. By jumping on that in disaster situations, I feel that it is the best way to reach people post-disaster (coming from a govt or NGO standpoint.) While I would not recommend using social media sites to gather information from indiviuals affected by disasters, I would definitely recommend such sites and technologies to reach those affected individuals. Erik is also right by saying that every disaster has produced new technologies.
ReplyDeleteI'll continue the current streak of agreeing with your second paragraph - while social media might not currently have much of a role on the government and NGO side of crisis management and response, it seems to have a tremendously important role of distributing the most up-to-date information to the afflicted population following a disaster. Japan was also a text-book example of what prior preparation can do during a disaster. Here we have a record breaking earthquake and the subsequent tsunami, yet the cost of life was minute in comparison to other recent tsunamis.
ReplyDeleteBoth of these precedents is something that should be examined and extracted for future implementation on a global scale. Innovation and preparation are key and of growing importance in a complicate world and frugal world.